Award-winning Bollywood actress Zaira Wasim has quit, saying that working in such an industry constantly interfered with her iman (faith) and threatened her relationship with her religion, NDTV reported Sunday.
“Five years ago I made a decision that changed my life forever. As I stepped my foot in Bollywood, it opened doors of massive popularity for me. I started to become the prime candidate of public attention, I was projected as the gospel of the idea of success and was often identified as a role model for the youth,” Wasim said a detailed post on her Facebook page.
“However, that’s never something that I set out to do or become, especially with regards to my ideas of success and failure, which I had just started to explore and understand,” she added.
The 18-year-old actor said as she completed five years in the profession, she wanted to “confess that I am not truly happy with this identity i.e my line of work”.
5 years ago I made a decision that changed my life and today I’m making another one that’ll change my life again and this time for the better Insha’Allah! 🙂 https://t.co/ejgKdViGmD
— Zaira Wasim (@ZairaWasimmm) June 30, 2019
“For a very long time now it has felt like I have struggled to become someone else. As I had just started to explore and make sense of the things to which I dedicated my time, efforts and emotions and tried to grab hold of a new lifestyle, it was only for me to realize that though I may fit here perfectly, I do not belong here.”
“This field indeed brought a lot of love, support, and applause my way, but what it also did was to lead me to a path of ignorance, as I silently and unconsciously transitioned out of Iman (faith). While I continued to work in an environment that consistently interfered with my iman, my relationship with my religion was threatened,” she said.
Support
Publishing her statement on Facebook, Zaira received huge support online, including support from renowned Muslim scholar Mufti Ismail Menk.
“May the Almighty bless you, be with you, keep guiding you, protect you, grant you goodness, happiness, contentment, bliss and success in this world and the next & the same for every one of us. Aameen,” he wrote on Facebook.
The actor, who made her big Bollywood debut in 2016, said the journey has been “exhausting, to battle my soul for so long” and life was too short yet too long to be at war with oneself.
Zaira was born to a Muslim family in Kashmir, India to Zahid and Zarqa Wasim. Her father works as an Executive Manager in Srinagar and her mother is a teacher.
Indian TV actress Dipika Kakar embraced Islam in 2018 before marrying Indian actor Shoaib Ibrahim.
Earlier in 2014, famous young Indian actress Monica decided to revert to Islam, don Islamic headscarf and quit the film industry.
In February 2014, reports said that both musicians AR Rahman and Yuvan Shankar Raja took the same decision to revert to Islam.
There are some 180 million Muslims in Hindu-majority India.